Dr. Sharon Moalem And Jonathan Prince's Survival Of The Sickest

1076 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Causes and consequences of malaria

Disease is considered an horrid word; by definition it is a disorder within an organism which implies it is unwanted and needs to be fixed. However in, Dr. Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince’s book, Survival of the Sickest the authors discuss a topic one does not often hear, the benefits of sickness. Diabetes, hemochromatosis, and sickle cell anemia are just a few problems that in the past helped us survive long enough to reproduce.
An estimate of 171 million people have diabetes and that number is expected to double by 2030. Diabetes affects how your body uses glucose. Unmanaged, this can lead to rapid dehydration, coma, and death. However today one can manage diabetes by controlling one’s diet and if necessary taking injections of insulin. …show more content…

Malaria survives on healthy red-blood cells and carriers do not have a lot of healthy red-blood cells. Similarly to how those with hemochromatosis starved the bubonic plague of iron, sickle cell anemia carriers starve malaria of red-blood cells. The proactive effect of malaria only works on those who have one copy of sickle cell anemia and not the actual illness. If one has sickle cell anemia, one is more likely to get malaria. Nonetheless, malaria is such a vicious disease that anything that can aid in the fight against it and towards survival and reproduction is helpful.
Dr. Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince’s book, Survival of the Sickest, points out the fact that diseases do not always need to be cured infact beneficial mutations is how we evolve. Although the book mainly discusses how diseases evolve humans, Moalem and Prince do discuss how we, humans shape diseases. By the simple acts of getting and giving mosquito netting, one forces the malaria virus to find a new perhaps less malicious path to survival and reproduction one that may not cure the malaria virus but may make not fatal, similar to the common

Show More
Related

  • Diabetes and Native Americans: A Cultural Epidemic

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    Diabetes is a disease in which a person’s body in unable to make or utilize insulin properly which affects blood sugar levels. Insulin is a hormone that is produced in the pancreas, which helps to regulate glucose (sugar) levels, break down carbohydrates and fats, and is essential to produce the body’s energy. The CDC (2013) offers reliable insight, summarized here, into the different types of diabetes, some causes, and health complications that may arise from the disease.

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Case Study

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the continent Africa, about 1 in 100 individuals develops this disease. We ask ourselves why is the frequency of a potentially fatal disease so much higher in Africa? The answer is related to another deadly disease, which is called malaria. Chills, fever, vomiting, and severe headaches characterize malaria (GENETICS Sickle Cell Case Study. (n.d.). 2000, October 19). Malaria is caused by a disgusting parasite called Plasmodium that is transmitted to humans by mosquitos. When the malaria parasites invade the bloodstream, the red blood cells that contain defective hemoglobin get sickle cell out and die (Facts About Sickle Cell Disease. 2014, January 16). This helps protect the individual with Sickle Cell Anemia from an infection of malaria. As you can see, this is why a variety of areas in the world has a high rate of malaria, such as

    Read More

  • Sick Woman Theory Summary

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    The sickness is not something that affects the human body but it is the poverty, violence, unaffordable healthcare, housing crises, food scarcity, and health stigma that has become normal in society. By placing a high value on health and healthcare, the patriarchal society we live in has been able to set a value on people. Thus those which are considered inferior to begin with, such as racial minorities, women or queer people, have a bigger disadvantage. The persons worth is then measured in the ability to sell labor, mediated by identity, and defines our access to the basic needs of life, those who are sick are seen as expendable in exchange of the interest of those who are "well". Hedva states, "To stay alive, capitalism cannot be responsible for our care… its logic of exploitation requires that some of us die” (2015).

    Read More

  • Diabetes Informative Speech Outline

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    Diabetes is becoming an epidemic. In fact, in 10 years many experts believe that people who suffer from diabetic is going to double. Kids who are as young as 8 years old are now borderline type 2 diabetics.

    Read More

  • Sickle-Cell Disease Among African Americans

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    During a short break of solitude from studying, I explored and came across that the environment in which most African Americans reside in has a high occurrence of malaria virus. The malaria virus disease is contagious and when it contaminates someone with sickle cell traits, it cannot survive on the external part of the human body so therefore the individual doesn’t develop the deadly malaria virus. While looking further into our class textbook on Human Genetics 11th Edition by Ricki Lewis, and this issue of sickle-cell among the African Americans, I

    Read More

  • The Metaparadigm of Nursing

    691 Words  | 2 Pages

    The notion of health is contextual and an interactive, dynamic process between person and environment (Schim et al, 2007). Both wellness and illness are conceptualized by the ‘person’, existing on a continuum across the lifespan (Arnold & Boggs, 2001).

    Read More

  • Diabetes

    992 Words  | 2 Pages

    Diabetes is a very serious disease that takes many lives each year. It is a lifelong disease that can be fatal to both adults and children if it is uncontrolled. Diabetes does not have to be fatal if certain precautions are taken. If diabetics maintain a healthy diet and watch their carbohydrate intake they can keep their diabetes under control. Monitoring blood sugar is also necessary to live a healthy life. If diabetics know the right way of maintaining their diabetes, they can live a very normal and active life.

    Read More

  • Understanding Malaria

    732 Words  | 2 Pages

    For several years, I have had an interest in virology and the spread and characteristics of various infectious diseases. Though it makes sense not to possibly induce a state of panic by informing individuals of illnesses that are not native to the area they live in and that they are not likely to contract, I have always liked to remain informed out of my own curiosity and interest. Thus, I have decided to write about malaria.

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Anemia Essay

    944 Words  | 2 Pages

    Having an inherited disease like sickle cell anemia takes a life-long of treatments and preventions of complications that comes with being diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. Many people have lived a long time while dealing with the disease because of the on-going care being provided to keep patients as healthy as possible. Knowing that both male and female have the sickle cell trait can prevent having a child with the sickle cell disease. From the help of the parents, doctors and medicine, sickle cell patients don’t have to deal with the pressure of living with a life threatening disease.

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Disease

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some of our population may be more at risk then others due to the ethnic background. This diseases is more prominent in some races more than others and studies have shown where the numbers increase or decrease depending on the race. Decedents of Africa, India, the Mediterranean, South and Central America and the Caribbean have a higher percentage of diagnoses. Countries who are exposed to the malaria parasite have the higher number of Sickle Cell cases. The percentage of African Americans with sickle cell is about 1 in 500 and a percentage 1 in 1,000 to 1,400 in Hispanic Americans. People of Caucasian race are less likely to have the diseases because of the history of the d...

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Anemia Lab Report

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Haldane suggested that they have a relation because he observed the allele frequencies of malaria in places that it is common. The relationship between these two is that a genetic change in hemoglobin that causes sickle-cell anemia, but prevents malaria. Hemoglobin is a red protein that carries oxygen through the bloodstream. Since both of these conditions are fatal, the best option would clearly be to steer clear of them, but for some people this is not an option. In Africa, both are common and many die from them, but because of the special relationship between the two there could be hope for people with large chances of getting it. It would not be helpful if a person got sickle-cell anemia, but if they could just receive the trait it could be that they would have a substantially less chance of death from the two conditions. If the trait for sickle-cell anemia wasn’t in full effect it could prevent malaria, but also not cause sickle-cell

    Read More

  • Sociology of Health and Illness

    2118 Words  | 5 Pages

    This also requires the person to be socially and economically productive in order to be seen as healthy. According to Mildred Blaxter (1990), there are different ways of defining health. Furthermore, disease can be seen as the presence of an abnormality in part of the body or where there is a harmful physical change in the body such as broken bones. So, illness is the physical state of disease, that is to say, the symptoms that a person feels because of the disease. However, there is some limitation of these definitions which is not merely an absence of disease but a state of physical, mental, spiritual and social wellbeing.

    Read More

  • Nursing Teaching Plan

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Diabetes is a common disease, which can be a serious, life-long illness caused by high levels of glucose in the blood. This condition is when the body cannot produce insulin or lack of insulin production from the beta cells in the islet of Langerhans in the pancreas. Diabetes can cause other health problems over time. Eye, kidneys, and nerves can get damaged and chances of stroke are always high. Because of the serious complications, the purposes of teaching a plan for diabetes patients are to optimize blood glucose control, optimize quality of life, and prevent chronic and potentially life-threatening complications.

    Read More

  • Malaria

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    Malaria (also called biduoterian fever, blackwater fever, falciparum malaria, plasmodium, Quartan malaria, and tertian malaria) is one of the most infectious and most common diseases in the world. This serious, sometimes-fatal disease is caused by a parasite that is carried by a certain species of mosquito called the Anopheles. It claims more lives every year than any other transmissible disease except tuberculosis. Every year, five hundred million adults and children (around nine percent of the world’s population) contract the disease and of these, one hundred million people die. Children are more susceptible to the disease than adults, and in Africa, where ninety percent of the world’s cases occur and where eighty percent of the cases are treated at home, one in twenty children die of the disease before they reach the age of five. Pregnant women are also more vulnerable to disease and in certain parts of Africa, they are four times as likely to contract the disease and only half as likely to survive it.

    Read More

  • Diabetes Essay

    2171 Words  | 5 Pages

    In conclusion, diabetes is a serious disease and can be life threatening. With the right research and implementation of new studies diabetes can be reduced among the populations. We as a people need to realize this epidemic and all get together and beat it. Restaurants need to stop putting chemicals and unnecessary fats in their food. Not only diabetics but everyone should educate themselves on what is going in your body when you eat. Also, exercising and getting off the couch, in children, needs to be addressed and that alone would help reduce diabetes in the younger population. I can’t stress enough on education. If you know what you are eating or how you are exercising you protect yourself from poor health and live a great life. Type 2 diabetes can be dwindled down with a conscious individual and group effort.

    Read More

More about Dr. Sharon Moalem And Jonathan Prince's Survival Of The Sickest

Open Document